ESTANCIA LIFE IN THE ARGENTINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2309, 2 June 1898, Page 7

ESTANCIA LIFE IN THE ARGENTINE.

EXPERIENCES OF A CANTERBURY MAN.

Mr Gsorge Murray, son of Mr J. l£. Murray, Greenpark, in a recent letter to hi 3 uncle, Mr I?. C. Murray, Lincoln, writes as follows from the Estancia El Dorado ia the Argentine :—: —

I am beginning to thiuk the climate here ia better than ia Canterbury, although it is awfully hot somatimes, and we always appear to behavisgheavy thunderstorms. There is no doubb this is a wonderful coun'ry, but I do no'o like the people, and envy them their possession of it. • It is a network of railways, owned by English companies — in t'aofc, there is au immense amaun 1 ; of Eug'Jsh. capital in the. country, and noae, I believe, lent under 8 per canb. Everything is taxed, even fafc and sfcore slitep and cattle aa they are sold. There are large, cattle aaleyards jasb outeirle Buenos Ayre«, in the centre of which id a pubic slaughterhouse, where they kill about; 1300 bead- daily for the usj of the town. The batchers are fearfully rough, never hang the meat, but skin and cut it up on the ground, and is is carfced straight to the shop. On the e3tancia, where they-, kill frozn one to tbrse b'eastsin a day, they lasso an Lanimal by the head out in the open, and another lasso i 3 then thrown round its bind legs. Bach lasao is tied to She saddle, and when the animal is thus secured a man runs up and sticks iii as one would a pif, sad ofien we are eating the meat wsthin two hours from the time the animal was running abouU. Yes ; i approve of the .Spanish eastern of patting tuothpicks on the table. In Buenos Ayres there are two large places, each doable the size of Tat-tei'sall'a in Oh'istchurch, where they sell stud horsdP, cattle, and sheep every daj. Three-fourbhs of the said there are imported from England, so t! n ey should soon make an impression in th's country. L:ocola rani*s and shorthorn bulls are being landed every day, and some of them of" the very beat. Ia fp-cb, Ido not know what will become of New Zealand produce in less than 10 years' time, as the country can psrodues everything that New Zeslaod can ; and, besides, it is co large. Freight ou tho railways is very cheap on account of competition, and tha lines have not be-n expensive to bnild, as tha country is level, and there are no bridges or cuttings. The amount ot live atocSr going Home afc present ia large ; bufc theu tijey have not sot soffieienfc bcate fixed up- for the purpose. For ius'.ance, we have had 100 i'at bullocks aud 600 wethers ready these last four mowthe, but cannofc well get them away as there is such a demand for space. The locusts ars fearful at present. For about a month before they started to fly the manager and 20 man were out killing them every daj', driving large mobs oE cattle and sheep ovir ihem. Now they ase flying, and have ts-ken all the leave 3 off the wjllow and poplar trees, and of the bulk ot the lucerne there i 3 nothing bub tbe stalks left. The manager informed me some timo ago that, itfebe locusts k?pS away he would have £6000, and may be £10,000, worth of lucerne seed, but now. he will scarcely have any leffc. In a favourable season they cut the same paddock of lucerne tor hay five time?, but this year only three or four times. They can get watsr by digging 20ft or 30ft, 'though it is often -brackish,' and the wells have to be continually deepened. The customary way is to draw up water in a large bucket by meana of a ' horse, as they consider wi ad milk are too expensive, but they will come in time. They can get sin artesian supply at a depth of 300 ft to 4-GOft, but then it will not, on this e3tancia, rise within 17ft of the surface. Here there is a nice, loamy, black soil, and I have seen it 12ft in depth. Some patches are on the light side, but from what 1 can learn there is a very large area , of good level land.

We have 500 acres of oats which are very . poor, and half the crop will not go 20 bushels I per acre. They appear 60 do their cropping in i » vary rough way. If the ground had bsen i worked before they plough it again ; and behind the plough they have an attachment th»b drops ma ; z2 into the furrow, and sometimes they give the ground a stroke of the harrows afterwards. The ploughing is done by "contract for 2s par acre, and they work from sunrise to sunset. Each ploughman has three four-horse teams, and ho works each team half a day. The horses get no hard feed, and the estancia fioda the contractor in tneab. The Italians chiefly do the hard work, and the Spanish peons, who I should say have a cross of Indian blood in them, are the stockmen. The manager here, Mr J. Stent, is an old Wanganui boy, and used to live up Hawera. way. He has been in this country 12 years, and has a Spanish wife- , but no family. The El Dorado esbancia comprises nearly six leagues of lp.nd, or 39,000 I acres, and up to last week we had 30,000 sheep, ■ 10,000 cattle, 7QO horses, 80 ostriches, and about 100 Tamworth pigs. The manager considers he can carry all the year the same number of cattle and horses, but only 20,000 sheep. Last week we sold 1000 store ewes at about 5s each ; 70, Lincoln ram lambs, which I considar would not 'Diake decent wethers in New Zealand, at £3 each ; 600 fat wethers at equal to 12s each to go to England", and 220 bullocks at £6 or £6 103 eaclu also for exaorb. Store

cai-tlr*, mixed ages and t.nP-ye IveiJ, sir* worth 1 about 20s to '60s each, but ihar. rf...es U'it include I any bullock? that would ever be large enough trs j »hip to. Engltnd. We have 1* imported L bnltp, and ] should say there are bs^wseu ' 3000 and 4000 breeding cows, and about 700 of them are not bad, and their bull c&lvls are kfjpfc. The manager rhas r?ars about 350 young balk every year, bot I don'c koow what he gats for tham. He Las> 2000 "Shropshire ewes and 2000 Lincoln ewes, an A' he pick* out tho best of tbe ratn laoiLs, and these arc's he ones I am 1 'oking alter. I put them into a long shed every morning and give them oats, crushed j maiz^ and brau, and leb thorn out when it gets cool. We have nine imported Lincoln rams from Ducdings, and they cost 45 guineas each ; but; Ido not see snjthicg great in them. We shore them when they arrived, and they cut from 14lb to 18lb of wool, and they were about ten months old. A great; number of the Lincoln rams of our own breeding have horns, and that will give you an idea what they are. When the manager came five years ago tbe ewes were I mixed haltbreda and merinos, but tha lucerne I is the thing to make them gro w. The houses we breed here are too good for our owq use, and so a mob of 240 came froti a rougher place of the owner's for station me. The natives ara fearfully rough on horses. We work from sunrise to suuset, j. and men's wages are about equal to 10-s per I week and tucker, which is very rough. Every j morning before sunrise aboufi 100 horses are 1 run into the yard, and we use one until midday, and then take another. The great airrn here is to get the land -into lucarue, which, cosbs, owing, I psesuaie, -to the price of the seed, about; Ib 3 per acre ; bub before doing no they geuerally leb it to an Italian for two or three crops at a snail rental. "Xhe land ia the native state in this part dues nob appear to grow a great quantity of feed. It; is covered with a plant somewhat like the fcoi-tui in New Zsaland (pampas grass), and rhsre are sevar&l poisonous . weeds. 'El Djrado is aboub half aown with lacerne, is well fenced, and the buildings are good, and I am told they consider ib worth 30s per acre. j

There is no douot this is a good country to make money in ; but I would rather live in New Zealand oa bare tucker. The mans-gei', Mr Stent, is the only practical roan I tee anywhere around these parts. On oae esfcaueia 1 know, owned by a' company, thcra ate 18,00 oattls and 45,000 sheep, and it has about haU a dozan managers and uader-managers, and there ia nob one of them that I should employ. A great many of the eHtanciaa in this country are badly managed.

I assisted one Sunday to draft a large mob 0? ca'utle out ifl the opea, and I rather amused the natives by using the stockwhip, as they aever casry one ; buh 1 was tired all over fur Ivu dpJys afterwards. We have cattle-draf bieig yards like sheepyarda, and have put through 5000 bend since I have bean here, the gate ot tha race being worked from a platform above. There is also a weighbridge ia the yards, and all the fat cattle ara weighed alive, and every now and again tbe manager has them in to weigh to see how they are getting on. Buyers always use fehe weighbridge even for sfceep, a«d email scales are takeo over to the sheepyards if the-cattle-yards are not used. — Chri3tchutch Press.